Looks like we got two scary/horror films in a row! Lucky us, and by “us” I mean the people who hate scary movies like me. For those who don’t follow along to the blog, one, what are you doing? and two, I’m not a fan of scary movies, in fact I refuse to watch them. There will be the occasional time where I decide I should be okay for a scary movie and then night comes around and I instantly regret watching the movie. Like The Conjuring. I watched the second one twice and both times regretted it. Why did I watch it twice? You got me there. Anyway, this is for the people who want to brush up on the Hellraiser movies and/or the people who are too scared to watch it. Take it away Andrew!
This movie starts with a guy getting this cube thing from some other guy, it then cuts to cube guy sitting in a square of candles holding the cube and rearranging it like some high tech rubik’s cube. The cube springs to life after a few twists and turns and impales the guy with several hooks. What the hell is happening right now lmao. We then cut to an empty and seemingly abandoned house where we see what I can only assume is our villain for the first time, he reassembles the cube guy’s face, apparently those hooks from before tore the guy apart.
Now we cut to a couple moving into what seems to be the same house. The two get into an argument and explore the house by themselves, the husband, Larry, finds moldy food that’s covered in roaches and maggots, that’s exactly what I’d wanna see upon moving into a house. The wife, Julia, ends up finding these weird pornographic photographs of her brother-in-law and some women, they’re wearing these strange, paper-machet looking masks. Naturally, she keeps them. What the f**k is this movie. The phone starts to ring and the husband answers it revealing that he has a daughter, Kirsty. Kirsty swings by the house and talks to her dad when we cut to Julia who’s fantasizing about her brother-in-law when Kirsty walks in and asks if she has a towel. Julia points her toward the bathroom and makes a quick getaway to the attic to continue her fantasy. Larry cuts his hand pretty badly on a nail and he walks into the room to find Julia, he drips blood all over the floor and as Julia is checking on his hand we see the blood being absorbed into the floor. The two head to the hospital and we see the floorboards in that same room start shaking as a humanoid skeleton bursts from the floor and screams.
We cut away to Larry, Julia and Kirsty having dinner with another family. Julia excuses herself from the dinner and, if it wasn’t already made clear before, it’s made pretty clear here that she’s unhappy with her marriage or her life..or both. Julia heads up to the attic room again and sees this disgusting pile of sludge on the ground before the skeleton grabs her leg. She tries to run when the skeleton calls to her by name. This skeleton reveals himself to be Frank, the brother-in-law. He says that Larry’s blood dripping onto the floor has brought him back to life. Frank tells Julia that he needs her to heal him, when she asks how he says the blood brought him this far and he needs more. Julia agrees to help Frank and Kirsty has a strange dream about seeing her father’s dead body so she calls him up. The next morning Julia goes out by herself and picks up another man. She brings him back to the house and leads him up into the attic and kills him with a hammer. Frank crawls over to the body but we don’t get to see what he does with it, instead we follow Julia into the bathroom as she tries to wash all the blood off of her. Upon reentering the room she sees what remains of the dead man and Frank, who has gained more skeletal and muscular form but is still a monstrous looking thing.
Frank reveals that he needs one or two more bodies to fully recover so he can run away from the Cenobites, what those are I don’t know but I guess we’ll find out. We cut to Kirsty at work and we can see she’s being followed by some dirty looking homeless man. She tells him to leave and, before doing so, he takes a handful of what appear to be crickets and eats them. Shortly afterwards we see Julia kill another guy and Frank heals further. Frank tells Julia about the cube he had gotten in the beginning and he explains that it can open doors, and the Cenobites tortured him visciously after he activated the cube. The Cenobites are shown to be disgusting looking creatures. After this, Larry and Julia are watching a boxing match when Frank screams and bangs on the wall, prompting Larry to go upstairs to check it out. Julia tries her best to dissuade him but he goes into the room anyway and sees…nothing, Frank isn’t there. The two head back to their bedroom and we see a quick glimpse of Frank rushing to hide in the closet. Frank emerges from the closet as Larry is on top of Julia and he cuts a rat clean in half in front of her and then leaves. I really don’t know what the hell I’m watching, like, what the f**k was that lmao.
Frank urges Julia to find someone else for him to “absorb,” I don’t know what else to call it, and Kirsty sees her leading the man into the house. Julia performs the murderous act and Kirsty hears a struggle and enters the house. She makes her way upstairs and she witnesses Frank finishing off his victim. Frank pulls her into the room and shuts the door behind him, he tries to kill her but she manages to get away and she gets a hold of the cube, throwing it out the window to distract Frank and running out of the house. After making it out of the house she takes the cube and continues walking down the street before hallucinating about Frank and passing out. She wakes up in a hospital only to find herself locked in the room. She starts to mess with the cube and it emits these lights as it begins to change form again, opening a door in the hospital room wall that, of course, Kirsty decides to enter. Why do people in these movies insist on making the stupidest possible decisions? Kirsty makes her way down a dark hallway, hearing a baby crying before coming face to face with this hideous creature, the thing chases her back out of the hallway, snapping its claws at her every step of the way.
Kirsty makes it back to her hospital room but the weird s**t ain’t over yet, the room’s walls start breaking apart when the Cenobites appear. They are about to bring Kirsty to hell and torture her just like they did to Frank, but Kirsty manages to tell them that she can lead them to Frank, the one person who has escaped them. The Cenobites agree to her terms but warn her that if she’s lying, they’ll make sure she pays dearly. Kirsty rushes home to warn her dad about what’s going on and she hugs what she thinks is her dad. Larry is looking a little worse for the wear, his face looks like it’s sewn on and idk how Kirsty doesn’t notice it. Kirsty finally realizes that Frank has killed her father and is wearing his face. Frank and Julia are about to kill Kirsty when she moves out of the way just before Frank swings his knife, sending it into Julia’s gut instead of Kirsty’s. Frank pulls the knife from Julia’s body and chases after Kirsty, who is now hiding upstairs. Frank corners Kirsty in the attic with her fathers dead body, before he gets the chance to kill her, the Cenobites show up and begin chaining him up again until he explodes. Kirsty exits the room just as this happens when one of the Cenobites stops her from leaving the house.
Kirsty gets a hold of the cube again and, just before the Cenobites can take her away, she begins to reverse the process of the cube, sending them back to wherever the hell they came from, not without destroying the house in the process. Kirsty’s boyfriend Steve shows up at the house, he’s been pretty irrelevant up until this point, and the cube opens one final doorway. The monster from earlier shows up again and tries to get at Kirsty and Steve until Kirsty finally finishes solving the puzzle cube and closing all the doors for good. The two seemingly burn the house down and Kirsty tosses the cube into the fire. While everything is burning, the dirty homeless man from earlier shows back up, reaches into the fire to grab the cube, catches fire and then turns into a giant skeletal dragon looking thing before flying off with the cube. All I can say about that is, what the f**k lol. The movie ends the same way it started, with the same man giving the cube away to another sorry soul. The end.
Having never seen this movie before I didn’t really know what to expect and I can honestly say, I was not expecting that lmao. Overall I thought it was a good movie and I’d recommend it if you want to be taken on quite a ride. What I’ve learned here is that: if a strange man approaches you with a gold cube asking “What’s your pleasure?” that’s when you turn around and walk in the opposite direction.
Next movie: Hellbound: Hellraiser II
Gabriella Dragone 